Comments on: Phone Support in Hosting, is it Needed? http://www.webhostingshow.com/2008/05/23/phone-support-in-hosting-is-it-needed/ Podcast following the hosting industry Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:16:51 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Jules Robinson http://www.webhostingshow.com/2008/05/23/phone-support-in-hosting-is-it-needed/#comment-36900 Jules Robinson Sat, 24 May 2008 04:25:11 +0000 http://www.webhostingshow.com/2008/05/23/phone-support-in-hosting-is-it-needed/#comment-36900 Telephone support is, in my humble opinion and experience, seriously unproductive for support staff and incredibly frustrating for clients. Let's face it, GOOD support engineers aren't great at customer support. If there's a problem, they can fix it, but given the environment they work in they can do that best when left alone and free of distraction. Telephones ringing and gnarly customers on the end of said telephones can slow things down dramatically, and the only way to really counter that is to employ a group of 1st line support engineers whose sole purpose is to answer the phone and never get "hands on" with anything other than basic e-mail configuration in support tickets. The problem with this is that when a client calls and can't speak to a person who can directly and immediately fix their advanced issue, because a ticket must be raised to 2nd line support, they get frustrated. They feel as if the call was a waste of time and money (and rightly so), when they could've just submitted a support ticket to begin with. The other huge disadvantage of telephone support is that it adds additional unnecessary workload to support teams due to the fact it's an effectively unlogged medium. If you call in, the support engineer has to create a ticket on your behalf, otherwise there's no record that you ever spoke to someone or what the call was about. This is basically pointless because you could save yourself the phone call and submit the ticket yourself directly! Don't get me wrong, I completely understand the desire for telephone support. It's good to have someone you can immediately contact in the event of any issues and find out what the heck is going on. Unfortunately many of us are completely unable to take a step back and see how unproductive such a system really is, not to mention costly for the host. When you think about it, what do you REALLY need to call a host for? To complain your website is down? A good host will be aware of that before even the client is. Phoning up to scream and vent your frustration doesn't help anybody, and that's really all it comes down to. "I have a problem and I want somebody to complain to directly." Just my 2.5 cents :) Telephone support is, in my humble opinion and experience, seriously unproductive for support staff and incredibly frustrating for clients.

Let’s face it, GOOD support engineers aren’t great at customer support. If there’s a problem, they can fix it, but given the environment they work in they can do that best when left alone and free of distraction. Telephones ringing and gnarly customers on the end of said telephones can slow things down dramatically, and the only way to really counter that is to employ a group of 1st line support engineers whose sole purpose is to answer the phone and never get “hands on” with anything other than basic e-mail configuration in support tickets. The problem with this is that when a client calls and can’t speak to a person who can directly and immediately fix their advanced issue, because a ticket must be raised to 2nd line support, they get frustrated. They feel as if the call was a waste of time and money (and rightly so), when they could’ve just submitted a support ticket to begin with.

The other huge disadvantage of telephone support is that it adds additional unnecessary workload to support teams due to the fact it’s an effectively unlogged medium. If you call in, the support engineer has to create a ticket on your behalf, otherwise there’s no record that you ever spoke to someone or what the call was about. This is basically pointless because you could save yourself the phone call and submit the ticket yourself directly!

Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand the desire for telephone support. It’s good to have someone you can immediately contact in the event of any issues and find out what the heck is going on. Unfortunately many of us are completely unable to take a step back and see how unproductive such a system really is, not to mention costly for the host. When you think about it, what do you REALLY need to call a host for? To complain your website is down? A good host will be aware of that before even the client is. Phoning up to scream and vent your frustration doesn’t help anybody, and that’s really all it comes down to. “I have a problem and I want somebody to complain to directly.”

Just my 2.5 cents :)

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